Woman with a Parrot, Gustave Corbet, 1866, oil paintingĮssaydi specifically stages all aspects of her photographs, the poses, the locations, the garments (which she makes), and the intricate Arabic calligraphy on the faces of the women she depicts. The contrast of the parrot in Courbet’s painting with the white dove in Essaydi’s photograph also has a strong message – while the former has strong exotic connotations the latter can be seen as women’s cry for peace in the Muslim countries in North Africa and the Middle East” ( ). Pedrag Pandiloski, a staff writer for the Brown Political Review, states “Essaydi responds to these overtly sexual paintings by bringing back agency to the women, both in the way they are depicted and in the words they are carrying on their faces. This is evident in the visual comparison of Les Femmes du Maroc: La Sultan and Gustave Corbet’s Woman with a Parrot, 1866 (see below). Essaydi specifically appropriates the poses and staging from these paintings to address the misrepresentation and hyper-sexualization of Muslim women. The addition of photographs by artists Lissa Rivera and Lalla Essaydi expanded the ratio of female-identifying to male-identifying artists both in the Gesture of a Still Image exhibition and Kennedy Museum of Art collections.Įssaydi works with the complexities of Arab female identity specifically in relation to Orientalism, a form of art in which European “male artists relied largely on hearsay and imagination female slaves or concubines (many with Western features), reclining in the nude or in Oriental dress” ( ). Les Femmes Du Maroc: La SultanĬhromogenic print mounted to aluminum with a UV protective laminate This image was highlighted in our recent exhibition Gesture of the Still Image, a selection of photographs from collections chosen for their portrayal of the human body in a moment of movement and/or emotion stilled by the artist. One of these pieces was Les Femmes du Maroc: La Sultan, by artist Lalla Essaydi. Recently, the Kennedy Museum of Art added a few new pieces to our collection.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |